I've been working on a project to make a traffic light controller with a seven segment countdown for the changing of lights. I was running into a snag with the 7-segment displays being multiplexed and so i looked for a shift register at my local radioshack since i didn't have enough pins. I then ended up upgrading to an arduino mega2560 in order to have plenty of pins for the project. My problem is now that after wiring up the seven segment displays the one will be bright and the other is barely visible. At first i thought i burned it out but switched the 7-segment displays and they both work fine and brightly. I removed the ground for the first 7-segment display to see if the second one would be brighter but it wasn't. I edited the code to only light up the second one and that didn't help either. I'm confused as to how to fix this problem. Any insight would be greatly appreciated.
So what code, how did you wire it, how is it powered ?
I was able to figure out the problem after walking away for awhile, after not having the 7-segments multiplexed any longer I forgot to go into void setup and add the pinMode for the new pins. Both displays work properly now